


Gone in the Wake

by davaia



Series: Forcelight [1]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Heavy Angst, M/M, Reconciliation, dark themes, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davaia/pseuds/davaia
Summary: He knew a day like this might come, but had still managed to cling to the hope that it wouldn’t. To the hope that he’d be left to his peace and solitude in this place, that the quarterly reports would be enough. That the Order and the galaxy at large might forget him beneath a pile of blue dust.Apparently not.





	Gone in the Wake

  
  
  
  
  
  


_Ink-Crawling Breath-Eater._

Sustilia’s natives had called it _Sadyu-eck’iprow’an_ , before they’d all died or moved off-planet—and it’s a poetic name for something so insidious, he thinks. He tips a pile of leaf clippings into the marble basin on the worktop, and picks up the heavy grinder in his right hand. 

Stone-on-stone has become a meditation for him. Mortar and pestle are an ancient instrument, but a reliable one, especially when the solar power generators flicker in and out of life in early mornings. They're all he has. The planet’s infrastructure has crumbled into nothing; the society it supported long since dissolved as the world slowly succumbed to this invasive xenobacteria. 

The Breath-Eater creeps with its characteristic, deep-indigo color, staining the veins of the organic lifeforms it infects before it turns them into lifeless, dried-out husks; it settles into the chalk-white ground only to oxidize and erode away into heavy, pervasive blue dust. The Breath-Eater makes for a landscape of stark contrasts, beautiful and lonely beneath the saturated light of Sustilia’s ten moons. 

It takes months for the Breath-Eater to gain its foothold, but once it does, it is relentless. There are a few green, lush holdouts high in the cracks of Sustilia’s cliff-faces, though, and these are the subject of his research mission as he collects and analyzes their rate of infection and deterioration. He’d volunteered his name, packed a week’s worth of supplies, picked up a clunky nebulizer and a box full of bitter, weekly Broatine inhaler-cartridges that would stave off the bacteria within his own body, then hitched a ride on the first cargo freighter headed into the sector. 

That was seven years ago, and he hasn’t returned to the Temple since. 

He lives in Valley Outpost. It’s his isolated home and research lab in one—four rooms carved directly into the grey-stone cliffside; the space is long and narrow, protected from Sustilia’s dust storms by a sharp switchback in the rock face. Only the little area dedicated to his workspace sits far enough forward to provide a strategic view of the steep path up from the empty chalk flats to his little home. 

Except for shifting dunes of dust and light, the slow weathering of the rough steps into something slick and soap-smooth, the view from his worktop has changed very little throughout the years. Only the sounds have changed. As the last of the world’s tiniest creatures die off, the sounds have disappeared one by one, as they had been since long before he landed on the planet. 

He suspects his voice has turned to ash inside his lungs. He can’t remember the last time or words he spoke, but he doesn’t mind it so much. It’s become its own sort of meditation for him, to listen and visualize the ebb and flow of Sustilia’s landscape. The only sounds now belong to him and the wind, and when those go still, the silence stretches on for continents. 

Silently, meticulously, Qui-Gon Jinn catalogs the planet’s death. 

  


* * *

  


It begins as a speck on the horizon, a dot of black that moves across his vision. It flickers like a mirage sometimes, making Qui-Gon briefly wonder if he hasn’t just imagined it, before he remembers that the physics of this world don’t work that way. 

He works and watches for a time, then eventually, just watches. He senses nothing from the being, which is a clue unto itself. His suspicions are confirmed when he catches a glint of reflective metal off the figure’s hip as it slowly draws closer to the base of the cliff. 

Qui-Gon sighs from the deepest part of his chest and shuts his eyes. He knew a day like this might come, but had still managed to cling to the hope that it wouldn’t. To the hope that he’d be left to his peace and solitude in this place, that the quarterly reports would be enough. That the Order and the galaxy at large might forget him beneath a pile of blue dust. 

Apparently not. 

He tidies his work bench. He straightens the long, heavy braid of his hair, smooths his threadbare tunics, and shrugs into the heavy, tight-woven, knee-length robe that protects him against the thick clouds of dust. He doesn’t bother with the face mask anymore. Hasn’t for years. 

Qui-Gon makes himself as presentable as he can here, then he picks up the walking stick he keeps by the door, and goes out to meet his inquisitor. 

Valley Outpost is a hard, three-hour hike from the chalk flats, and the figure is dressed for it. The person is swathed head-to-toe in thick, beige tunics—not unlike his own—and a pair of heavy-duty goggles to block out the planet’s grime. 

No, he can’t sense this stranger in the Force—but the tells are there, revealed above the beige face-wrap and behind the dirty, blue-tinged pane of his goggles: the mole on his right cheekbone and the strangest, greenest eyes Qui-Gon has only ever seen on one being in the whole of the galaxy. The memory of them is bright and strong in his mind, even after seven years alone. 

_Anyone_ , Qui-Gon thinks, _anyone but him_. 

They stand and stare at one another for long moments. Qui-Gon sighs, and his grip tightens on his walking stick. 

The man lowers his scarf in two swift tugs. He’s grown a beard, sleek and well-groomed. He pushes the goggles up over his bound-back hair, smudging the dark outline of dust around his eyes. Age and hardship have chiseled away the last, youthful softness of his face—even beneath layers of protective cloth wrapped around his body, Qui-Gon can see this is a man of sharp angles and hard, whipcord muscle. He’d never had a large frame, but Knighthood has honed Obi-Wan Kenobi down into efficient leanness. 

_Obi-Wan._

Qui-Gon’s heart stirs and wakes inside his chest. 

He—Obi-Wan looks— 

True realization sets in, and his heart begins to twist and howl. It beats and rattles and snarls to free itself from his ribcage and claw its way through the dust between them and leave him forever. 

"Hello there," Obi-Wan says. The timbre of his voice is as refined as it ever was, perhaps more so now, and hearing it in person after so long nearly hurts Qui-Gon’s ears. 

Qui-Gon tries to remember where he put his own voice—he set it down somewhere about five years ago, and has hardly found use for it since. 

"You should leave." 

The words fall out of his mouth like flakes of rust. 

"Probably," Obi-Wan says and waits with an expectant look. His gaze is calm and steady, never wavering once. This man doesn’t defer to Qui-Gon anymore, and he knows it. 

Qui-Gon lowers his eyes first; he’s already lost the first round of whatever battle Obi-Wan’s brought with himself. He turns his back and begins the slow, knee-popping climb back up the stark cliffside. 

Obi-Wan follows him, two paces behind and matching his path step-for-step all the way to the house. 

Qui-Gon shrugs his dirty cloak off as he gets to the door, which he leaves hanging open. The dwelling is shadowy and cool, protected from the afternoon heat. It helps that he usually keeps the curtains drawn. 

Obi-Wan dumps his heavy pack and politely peels his outer layers off outside, shaking the powdery dust out of them and his hair, stamping his dirty boots off for the sake of Qui-Gon’s clean floor. "May I use your 'fresher?" he asks, trailing in after the Master. 

Kind of him to ask, Qui-Gon thinks, considering they’re the only living beings on the planet. He supposes that’s just Obi-Wan, though, and some things never change. He directs Obi-Wan with a tip of his chin over his left shoulder towards the far door, granting tacit permission. 

It’s a formality. There are only four rooms; it’s not as though the man could get lost. 

"Thank you." 

Qui-Gon scrubs his hands clean in the basin and starts dinner in silence, automatically pulling out double the ingredients he normally would: tinned vegetables, powdered soup base, powdered sponge-bread, and a chalky vitamin tablet. He’s had the same meal nearly every night for years—he just hasn’t bothered to request anything different in his monthly supply-drops. 

He can’t remember if Obi-Wan likes daro root. It bothers him that he can’t remember, like an itch in his brain he can’t quite reach. He can’t remember their last shared meal, or meditation, or moment of peace. He can’t remember a thousand tiny moments of joy and pride and happiness they must have shared in twelve years at the other’s side, but he can remember their last words to one another. 

It still makes his stomach clench with shame and regret, to know that the first time he had ever raised his voice in anger to Obi-Wan had been the last time he’d spoken to him at all. As soon as he was well enough to walk, Qui-Gon had left the Temple in disgrace—his latest learner renounced, gone into the galaxy, and the other denied to him. 

Knighthood had been a paltry compensation for Obi-Wan, for the way his apprenticeship ended. Qui-Gon knows that. He _knows_ it. Obi-Wan had begun their relationship by offering up his own life, and Qui-Gon had ended it when he deemed that life _competent_ and moved on to the next. 

Qui-Gon’s last words had been shouted, hurled clumsily across a bland, white med-room; Obi-Wan’s last words had been soft, wielded with precision, and so much more devastating for it. 

Qui-Gon nicks his thumb on the metal tin, and sucks the drop of blood away. 

It’s a scant seven minutes before Qui-Gon hears the 'fresher door open, and a moment later he’s surrounded by the damp, wafting scent of watery, green-grass soap. It reminds him of The Room of a Thousand Fountains in the same way Obi-Wan’s soft footsteps and refined voice remind him of an ancient, marble-lined home and life long gone. It reminds him, unflinchingly, of what it felt like to be immersed within the Living Force. 

"Thank you," Obi-Wan repeats, wood scraping over stone as he takes a seat at the little kitchen table. "I’m feeling a bit like myself again." 

Qui-Gon doesn’t know what that means anymore. He dumps a packet of dehydrated spices into the soup pot. "Are you here for business or pleasure?" he asks over his shoulder, voice desert-dry. 

"That’s rather your call to make, I think," Obi-Wan responds. "Business, officially. I’m to escort you back to the Temple. You’ve been recalled." 

"Escort me?" Qui-Gon scoffs. "Has the Council lost faith in my ability to pilot a ship?" 

"I suspect they’ve lost faith in your ability to follow orders at all," Obi-Wan says, "but that’s not such a far cry from when you left." 

Qui-Gon snorts. "I must be in some trouble with them, to have warranted the deployment of the Sith Killer." 

Behind him, there’s a pause so brief it’s almost imperceptible. Not to Qui-Gon, though. He feels ice in that silence, black and chasmic and years-deep. 

When he speaks again, Obi-Wan’s voice is seamless, smooth. Impersonal. It’s so lacking in life or warmth that it nearly eats the space between them like dark matter. "They don’t call me that anymore." 

"Oh?" Qui-Gon casts a half-glance over his shoulder. He knows he’s playing right into Obi-Wan’s hands, but he can’t help himself from asking, "And what do they call you now?" 

Obi-Wan smiles across the table at him. "Come back and find out for yourself." 

  


* * *

  


Qui-Gon does the washing up, and Obi-Wan watches him. Qui-Gon settles into his routine evening meditation, and Obi-Wan quietly sits across from him, and watches. They don’t speak another word to one another, and it’s a staggering relief when Qui-Gon shuts himself away in the tiny 'fresher for his shower where Obi-Wan can’t—or is at least unwilling—to follow him. 

Qui-Gon lingers longer than he should; he shuts his eyes and presses his forehead against the warm tiles. He has the irrational fear that he’ll fall to his knees, unable to rise again beneath the weight of seven years. _Seven years_. His breath tightens in his chest and he curls his fingers into his hair tight, _tight_ —willing serenity and peace upon himself in a way he knows they can never be willed, through force and pain and shoving it all _down, down, down_. 

Maybe Obi-Wan will have read his inhospitality as futility and turned for home. Maybe he’ll leave Qui-Gon to his leaf clippings and his dust and his empty, dead planet. Qui-Gon certainly has regrets enough to repopulate the latter without Obi-Wan’s assistance. 

He’s not so lucky. When he emerges from the 'fresher fully dressed, hair a heavy, damp braid down his back, Obi-Wan is busy setting out his thin bedroll on the stone floor. 

_Face it. Face him._

"You’ll freeze down there," Qui-Gon says dully. "Take the bunk." 

"I don’t want to put you out." 

"Isn’t that why you’re here?" It’s cutting—a low-blow and Qui-Gon wants to bite back the words the moment they pass his lips. He tries to soften them. "You won’t," he says, pulling the heavy blankets back and folding up his long limbs into the sleeping area carved into the wall. He scoots off to the side to make extra space. 

Obi-Wan eyes the bed, speculative. "I suppose we shared enough bunks during my apprenticeship." He sits gingerly on the edge of the mattress before commenting, "You always made me sleep on the inside, though." 

Qui-Gon doesn’t say anything else. He sleeps thinly and restlessly, and it is deep into the night when he awakens again. Next to him, Obi-Wan’s breaths are slow and deep, the whole of his body is relaxed where he’s curled up on his side. 

It’s the first time he can truly, honestly take in the sight of the man Obi-Wan is now. He studies this familiar stranger in the half-light of Sustilia’s moons—and Qui-Gon’s eyes fill with wet heat he won’t allow himself to acknowledge. It’s only because of the darkness that Qui-Gon is bold enough to reach across the small space between them. 

He nudges Obi-Wan’s hair— _longer, softer, lighter than it used to be; a desert mission, perhaps?_ —back and presses his fingertip behind his right ear. It’s the place where his learner’s braid used to be, the braid Qui-Gon never got the chance to cut. His heart aches and his mind throbs in that dusty, empty place where the memory of Obi-Wan’s knighting ceremony should have been. 

His finger grazes down Obi-Wan’s scruffy jaw, and Obi-Wan turns into the faint warmth of his touch. He sighs and mumbles something under his breath, rubbing against Qui-Gon’s hand, never once surfacing from his sleep. Unusual for a trained warrior, but perhaps he still trusts Qui-Gon on some instinctual level. 

Emboldened, Qui-Gon lights another two fingertips against Obi-Wan’s right cheek. He grazes over the tiny mole there, the one he’d always found inexplicably endearing, and which had always stayed the same no matter how quickly the boy grew. It might be the only thing that could convince Qui-Gon that the person in his bed was truly his Obi-Wan, and not some impeccably groomed, silver-tongued ghost. 

Outside the narrow window, a cloud passes in front of Sustilia’s moons, blacking out the room’s paltry glow. When the watery, purple-blue light returns, Obi-Wan’s eyes are open and bright, gazing at him through the dimness. 

Words slip out of Qui-Gon’s mouth before he can stop them, almost inaudible. "You’ve grown up..." 

A strange, sad look shadows Obi-Wan’s face for a moment, then dissipates just as quickly. "What would you have had me do?" he asks softly, then, softer still, "Qui-Gon, I—" he slides a hand up to grip Qui-Gon’s wrist, touching him with a gentleness and vulnerability that nearly turns the older man’s stomach. "I wasn’t so sure you would truly be here," he admits hesitantly. 

It’s too much. Too much, too soon, and Qui-Gon lets the words fall flat between them. He jerks his hand back, pulls the quilt up, and rolls away to face the wall, shoulders stiff. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t make another sound for the rest of the night. 

  


* * *

  


It had been one of his fondest memories of Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship—plying a grumbly, scruffy-haired boy out of bed first with gentle reminders, then cups of strong tea, then threats of moving their morning katas to the Frost Garden and _I’ll hide your boots, my young apprentice, if you don’t get out of bed this minute_. The next day, Qui-Gon learns that Obi-Wan is an early riser now—much earlier than he is. 

It’s a beautiful, clear morning, the landscape bright and stark, blue-on-white without the usual heavy wind. Qui-Gon pushes the shutters in the main room open with a puff of fine, indigo silt to let the house air out. 

Limned in pale sunlight, he sees Obi-Wan on the jutting stone outcrop just past the edge of the main path. He's dressed down to simple training leggings and the somber, high-collared tunics elder Masters always seemed to favor. His eyes are closed, his expression relaxed. It’s a seven-hundred-foot fall down the side of the cliff face, but Obi-Wan’s footing is elegant and sure. He’s performing his kata at a moderate pace—it’s clearly a battle-dance, but the Force around him hums with a serene, almost meditative, cool-tinged energy. The style is unmistakable in its restrained, defensive grace as Obi-Wan moves through the positions, letting his blade take the invisible fight for him. 

Qui-Gon makes his morning tea and watches Obi-Wan, polished and cool, and wonders when his fiery apprentice turned into— _this_. How had he never seen it, the potentiality of this man within his own learner? Once, Qui-Gon had been unable to even picture Obi-Wan as a Knight—now all he can see before him is a singular Master-in-the-making. 

Obi-Wan is as smooth as the stilled surface of water. He gives nothing, only reflects Qui-Gon’s own bitterness back to himself now, and Qui-Gon is disturbed by what he sees. Instead, Qui-Gon looks beyond, and tries to find the currents and eddies he knows must still run beneath. The tells are there, only faint echoes of the Obi-Wan that Qui-Gon knew, but lingering all the same. He sees them in the ebb and flow and pull of muscle, the flickering half-smile as he loses himself within the Force’s pull, fractional hints at the powerful and sun-bright spirit contained within. 

Mug cradled into the hollow of his chest, Qui-Gon leans against the doorway and observes in silence. "Soresu," he says, once Obi-Wan’s motions still. 

Obi-Wan’s eyes blink open and refocus. He stares at Qui-Gon over his own blade for a moment as he silently counts out his resting pose, then cuts the power and lets his arm drop. "Yes," he says. "I switched styles. I’m—" he pauses, "—better suited for this." 

Qui-Gon doesn’t let himself think about why that hurts him, just a tiny, pinprick ache in his heart. "Clearly," he says. It’s meant to be a meaningless space-filler, a neutral acknowledgement, but it comes out cold and flat. 

He thinks he catches a flash of answering hurt on Obi-Wan’s face, before the man shutters his expression over once more. "Thank you," he says crisply, and ignites his lightsaber to begin his work again. 

  


* * *

  


Silent morning katas, silent days grinding and distilling his samples, silent afternoon meditations, silence upon silence; it sounds no different than any of Qui-Gon’s other days on Sustilia, but now it eats away at him like the Breath-Eater eats away the landscape. He nearly breaks under the weight of Obi-Wan’s constant, speculative gaze on him, analyzing Qui-Gon like his own, personal alien specimen. The question builds up and hangs on Qui-Gon’s lips, almost ready to be asked— 

_How did we become this?_

Until he comes out of the bedroom one morning to find Obi-Wan seated at his workbench, carefully and methodically dismantling and packing up Qui-Gon’s lab equipment. 

Irritation and frustration rise hot in Qui-Gon’s throat, already boiling at the ready for days now. 

"You’re acting outside the parameters of your mission assignment, _Knight_ Kenobi," Qui-Gon says coldly. It’s ugly for him to wield seniority like a crude, blunt weapon, but Obi-Wan dodges it handily. 

"I’m implementing a creative solution in furtherance of my mission goal, _Master_ Jinn," Obi-Wan counters. He pushes his loose sleeves back and sets to packing up the boxy, portable mass-spec. "And none of this belongs to you." 

"The Temple isn’t suffering for lack of a few lab supplies," Qui-Gon bites out. 

"How would you know?" Obi-Wan says sharply. "You’re hardly in a position to comment on what the Temple does and does not _suffer_ for. Besides," he adds, without sparing a glance up, "Laying claim to something doesn’t just give you the rights to it." 

_One renounced, one fallen and dead, another renounced. Were you just burning through us to get to him?_

Qui-Gon’s expression grows dark and thunderous, heavy with warning. "Go home," he growls. 

_Get out._

"No." 

_Tell me I’m wrong._

"Go _home_." 

_Get out! GET OUT!_

"You’re not my Master anymore," Obi-Wan says archly. "And besides, it would be much easier just to give this all up entirely." He snaps the storage crate shut and turns a cool look onto Qui-Gon. "Don’t you think?" 

_The Council is right. You’re not fit to take him._

It’s the first moment Obi-Wan has ever rendered him speechless. Qui-Gon’s jaw works once, twice, then snaps closed so hard his teeth click. He turns on his heel and leaves Obi-Wan there, the weight of his gaze heavy on his back. 

Qui-Gon doesn’t slam the door when he leaves, but he might as well have for the dead, ear-ringing silence left in his wake. 

  


* * *

  


That night he wakes to Obi-Wan’s hands around his throat. 

His eyes fly open and above him, breath hot against his face, Obi-Wan’s expression is twisted in a snarl, eyes glazed and fever-dream bright as he tries to wring the life out of his old Master’s throat. 

Adrenaline and reflex kick in. "O-bi—!" Qui-Gon grunts out and thrusts a hand up _hard_ , slamming the heel of his palm straight into Obi-Wan’s solar plexus. It shoves a hideous noise out of Obi-Wan as it knocks the breath right out of his body, knocks him back into wakefulness. 

Obi-Wan’s gaze clears as he struggles for air. "Oh, gods," he chokes out and rears further away on the mattress. "I—" he utters, eyes over-bright and unsettling in the darkness. He looks stricken, and the moment between them is startlingly real, rendering them broken open and exposed. "I’m sor—" Obi-Wan pitches over to sit at the edge of the bed, gasping, nearly bent double with a hand pressed to his aching chest, bare feet curled almost childishly on the floor. 

Qui-Gon sits forward, brow knotted with worry as he presses a broad, firm hand to Obi-Wan’s shuddering back—seeking instinctively to ground, to comfort. 

"Please don’t," Obi-Wan rasps from behind his hair. He pulls away with a stammered, "I’ll just—I’ll go—" and escapes to the main room, where he stays for the rest of the night. 

Qui-Gon hears him retching at the kitchen sink. 

  


* * *

  


The bruises on Qui-Gon’s throat darken black and purple. He catches Obi-Wan’s eyes lingering on them the next evening, face unguarded and heartsick-guilty, and Qui-Gon knows he has an expression to match when he thinks of the twin mark hiding under Obi-Wan’s tunics. 

Obi-Wan takes a pill before bed now and sleeps dreamlessly, death-still. He lies so still that Qui-Gon stays awake with his hand resting an inch from Obi-Wan’s parted lips, monitoring the soft, barely there heat of his breathing. Seven years apart, and after only a few days and nearly as few words, they already have habits together, Qui-Gon muses bleakly. 

Another two days pass in silence, and the tension grows unbearable. 

Obi-Wan caves first, late in the afternoon once he’s finished his lab-packing for the day. He drags his rucksack inside and digs around until he finds a familiar, pearly glass bottle. "A truce," he says, cracking the top off the aged Chandrilan smoke-whiskey. He helps himself to two stoneware mugs and pours a healthy two fingers into each. 

"We were never at war," Qui-Gon says flatly, looking up from his data reports at the table. 

Obi-Wan holds a mug out. "Weren’t we?" 

"If we’re negotiating the terms of a detente, will you answer my questions," Qui-Gon asks, accepting it, "or will you keep dancing around in a circle like a tookie-tookie bird?" 

"Some of them, perhaps. It depends." Obi-Wan settles into the creaky kitchen chair next to Qui-Gon and casts him an indulgent, faintly expectant look. 

Qui-Gon takes his first sip, and it tastes like a wild, exquisite indulgence. He swallows. "How is Anakin?" 

_I must train him—he is the Chosen One._

Obi-Wan’s expression softens. He relaxes back and laces his long fingers around his cup. "Nearly as tall as you now. He’s doing well. Excelling, in fact," he responds, the warmth in his voice genuine. "Mace is quite the proud Master. Not that he lets on very often." 

_All the more reason for you not to._

"Is Ani—happy?" 

"He misses his mother." 

"To be expected." 

"He attends monthly counseling sessions with the healers," Obi-Wan says, then adds, "and Mace takes him to visit her on Naboo twice a year." 

That gets Qui-Gon to raise his eyebrows. "Naboo?" 

Obi-Wan just smiles enigmatically over his cup. "Come back and I’ll tell you." 

"Impertinent," Qui-Gon mutters—the word slips out unbidden, soft and teasing, just like it had a thousand times throughout Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship. He imagines he sees a flickering smile out of the corner of his eye. Maybe it’s just dust. Whether Obi-Wan is smiling or not, the whiskey is still magnificent, so he takes a deeper sip. 

Obi-Wan takes pity on him, then, finally and for once. "Young Padme Amidala purchased Shmi’s freedom, and gave her a place in the Naberrie household in Theed. It’s—the change in Anakin was remarkable, really. It was—" Obi-Wan frowns in thought and scratches at his beard, "—not unlike his first experience with Naboo’s ocean, I suppose. This wondrous, purely good _thing_ , which so many take for granted, and which he never thought he’d be allowed in life. It relieved him of a burden he’d never known he’d been forced to bear, and he finally _understood_ it. Mace—knew the importance of that, I think, when he took Anakin on." 

Qui-Gon lets out a long breath, and feels some old worry within his mind settle into stillness. "I’m not sure that’s something you or I could have given him," he admits. 

"No," Obi-Wan agrees readily. "It’s a regret I carry, though, that I could never keep my last promise to you." 

" _Don’t_ ," Qui-Gon says, and it comes out more abruptly than he intended. _Don’t regret it—I asked so much from you, for so long. Don’t bring that up—the day I escaped with my life and still lost that which made it worthwhile._ He isn’t sure what he meant to say. Instead, he asks, "How are you and Quinlan?" 

Obi-Wan’s brow wrinkles. He seems confused by the abrupt change in topic. "I—fine." The end of the word drifts upwards as if in question. 

"Not bonded yet?" Qui-Gon means it to sound teasing, but the words land flat and toneless. 

Clarity breaks across Obi-Wan’s face, though it makes him look stiff and just a bit uncomfortable. He’s not a man who appreciates being caught off-guard. "You knew about that?" 

Qui-Gon casts him an indulgent look, and feels like he’s gained some measure of high ground for the first time in days. "Of course I did," he says. "I was your Master. And your age once, too." 

"It’s not romantic, what Quin and I have," Obi-Wan says. "Just—" 

"Sex?" Qui-Gon supplies. 

_Qui-Gon has bought Obi-Wan the same treat for ten years now, this time of year. He has a box of bitter honey-taffy in hand—a small reward for his exam-stressed senior apprentice. He arrives home early from the senate, expecting to find Perfect Padawan Kenobi poring over his Astronav notes._

_Instead, he finds Perfect Padawan Kenobi, tunics gaping open and leggings jerked down around his thighs, getting fucked hard over the kitchen table and begging for it harder._

_"Force, Obi," Quinlan Vos grits out, gripping Obi-Wan by the waist, pulling him back onto his cock as much as he’s thrusting in. "How are you still so—tight after last night?" He licks a messy stripe up his palm and smacks a handprint over the curve of Obi-Wan’s ass, layering it atop the days-old, fingerprint bruises._

_"Q-Qu—I’m—ngh—!" Obi-Wan is incoherent, glassy-eyed and lost beneath his own pleasure. He chokes on his breath and arches up, grabbing back for a fistful of his lover’s long hair as he comes messily over his own fist, over the tabletop. His body pulls tight, powerful and sleek with lean muscle that Qui-Gon Jinn had trained him into._

_"Gorgeous," Vos groans his own orgasm into Obi-Wan’s shoulder. He bites down and mouths at the darkening imprint there. "You’re perfect. Fucking perfect."_

_Obi-Wan just moans and collapses forward onto the table, cheek pressed to the wood, loose-limbed and pliant as Vos spends the last of himself inside his body, then pulls out with an obscene, wet noise. He laughs as he slumps down to kiss Obi-Wan’s cheek._

_Obi-Wan’s answering smile is sated, almost sleepy, soft and honey-sweet. Unfamiliar._

_"You should be illegal," Vos croons, smoothing his hand over Obi-Wan’s freckled back, "All relaxed and fucked-out. Just look at you, like this—"_

_Qui-Gon does._

_The lingering illusion of Obi-Wan’s youth falls away._

"The mutual abatement of deep-space loneliness. But, yes." Obi-Wan smiles funnily. "Sex." 

"Are you?" asks Qui-Gon. 

"Am I what?" 

"Lonely." 

"Of course I am," Obi-Wan sniffs, as though it’s the simplest question in the world. Ocean tides rise and fall. Naboo’s sky is blue. Obi-Wan Kenobi is lonely. 

It hurts to hear that—more than Qui-Gon could have ever expected. There are a thousand things he could say and they all flitter through his mind at once. _How did we let this happen? I only ever wanted you to find peace in your purpose. Can peace and loneliness coexist?_

Qui-Gon imagines that the coexistence of peace and loneliness sounds a lot like resignation, and sips his drink. He holds it in his mouth for a moment, letting the woodsmoke-spice fill the back of his nose. He swallows hard against the burn and asks, "Is that manner of relationship fulfilling for you?" 

"Is there a lesson for me on the other side of that question?" 

"I’m genuinely curious. There are many types of fulfilling relationships that don’t involve sex." 

"Do you find your dust and celibacy fulfilling?" Obi-Wan’s gaze on him is heavy, inescapable. He raises a brow and motions around the dim room. "This lifestyle?" 

Qui-Gon’s smile is bitter and his honesty is cutting. "I think my lifestyle has gone far beyond celibacy into something else entirely." 

"Abject asceticism?" asks Obi-Wan dryly. 

Qui-Gon doesn’t look up, gaze hazy and fixed on some unremarkable spot on the floor. "Desolation," he murmurs into his whiskey, feeling it in his head and mouth now. "I—wouldn’t necessarily recommend it." 

Obi-Wan’s jaw tightens. "It doesn’t have to be that way. You’re missed, at the Temple. The Council would welcome their Maverick back this very moment, if they could." 

"I don’t believe that." 

"Don’t?" 

"Can’t." 

" _Won’t_ ," Obi-Wan counters hotly, finally letting a flicker of his temper through. "No one chased you out to this planet at blaster-point, you know." 

That’s true enough. Qui-Gon had parked himself at an Archive terminal for thirty minutes and scoured all the on-going, low-priority, voluntary missions that would take him at least half a galaxy away from Coruscant. It had been a desperate bid to gain some semblance of control over a life spiraling too quickly for him to grasp any longer, any sense of _center_ and _serenity_ blown away like grit on Tatooine. 

Qui-Gon lets his head hit the back of the chair. "They were right to take Anakin from me," he mutters towards the ceiling. The admission is the closest he’s ever come to an apology. "You were knighted, Anakin went to Mace—" he presses a hand to his ribs, over the furled knot of scar tissue there, a permanent gift from Maul’s blade, "and I could scarcely outrun a Hutt. I still can’t. I had—outlived my purpose there." 

"You can’t possibly think that. You’re bull-headed, but you’ve never be so willfully selfish as that." Obi-Wan’s eyes narrow, speculative, then light with unexpected realization. "…You’re lying to me," he says a moment later. He doesn’t sound upset—just too puzzled to be upset. "Why are you lying to me?" 

"I told you, I wasn’t—" 

" _Bantha_ shit. _I_ needed you," Obi-Wan interrupts sharply, specks of red flushing high and dark on his cheeks. He pitches forward in his chair. "I still needed my _Master_. There was—" He stops studdenly. Swallows. Tries again. "There was a time, after you left the Temple, when—" Obi-Wan looks away, then, brow furrowed. He sinks back and takes a sip of his whiskey, then presses the backs of his fingers to his lips as if trying to trap his own words inside his mouth. 

Qui-Gon sits up and some of the ice between them cracks, weakened. "When what, Obi-Wan?" 

The expression clears. "Another time, perhaps," Obi-Wan sets his glass down carefully. "I rather think a bottle of whiskey was a poor housewarming present. In hindsight, I should have opted for something a bit more traditional." 

Qui-Gon narrows his eyes, suspicious of the obvious topic-change but indulging it all the same; he senses the wisdom in letting Obi-Wan have this moment. "Like what?" he asks. 

Obi-Wan’s eyes flicker about the room, over the cut stone walls and floor, the bland, utilitarian furniture and threadbare curtains. Something passes over his expression like a cloud before the sun—not pity, nothing so straightforward as that, but some sort of exasperated sadness that belongs only to Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

"A bloody _plant_." 

  


* * *

  


_When what, Obi-Wan?_

Two mornings later, Qui-Gon learns by accident, and it’s worse than what he could have imagined. 

Obi-Wan is already up, stripped to the waist at the stone basin in the corner of the bedroom. He leans down to rinse his face, and the motion pulls into stark relief the pearl-white webs of scar tissue across his back. Deep, ragged lines of it—haphazard from nape to waist, disappearing beneath the cloth of his leggings. They curl around the line of his ribcage, splattered with burns and puncture wounds, massed and puckered with old infection. 

Qui-Gon sits up on his elbow, unable to look away, frost curling over his bones. He thinks of Obi-Wan’s nightmare and something small and horrible slots into place for him. 

Obi-Wan hears the rustle of the blankets and freezes for a second, cold water dribbling out of his cupped palms where he bends over the basin. He recovers, splashes his face, rubs at the back of his neck as if he’s stalling for time. 

The old Master says nothing, stifled beneath his own heartsickness. He knows what torture looks like, the physical evidence of a body having been brutalized and left to grow putrescent and festering. Obi-Wan—his Obi-Wan— 

_My Obi-Wan._

Obi-Wan jerks his tunic over his shoulders and uses the sleeve to hastily dry his face. "Come back with me, and I’ll tell you," he says mildly, without looking back. He cinches the sash tight and finally half-glances over his shoulder towards the bed. 

Qui-Gon rises, comes to stand behind Obi-Wan. He reaches and gently nudges the tunic down over Obi-Wan’s narrow shoulders, touching only cloth. He watches the hair stand up on the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, the way his muscles pull tight beneath the scrutiny. 

It's the closest they've been to one another in seven years when Qui-Gon lights his fingertips to each shoulder and, with just the barest pressure, urges him to turn around. "Let me—?" 

Obi-Wan does, but avoids Qui-Gon’s eyes. He turns and presses his back against the sink basin. They’re so close that Qui-Gon can feel the damp hitch of Obi-Wan’s breath against his throat as he works his fingers into Obi-Wan’s sash, gently tugging it loose. With careful hands, he draws Obi-Wan’s tunic back open, exposing naked, freckled skin—just enough to confirm his suspicions as his eyes track over the badly healed marks scattered down his torso. 

A band of deep, waxy scar tissue rings Obi-Wan’s neck like a collar, which, Qui-Gon has the terrible realization, is exactly what it must have been. Deep, ugly, uneven patches of fingernail-scoured flesh curve from the ring of tissue down his nape, his collarbones—evidence of the same compulsion as a trapped, frenzied animal trying to gnaw its own limb off. 

Qui-Gon’s expression crumples. Once, he had wondered if he’d had any heart in him left to break. Only Obi-Wan Kenobi could find it, he thinks, without even trying. "Oh, young one," he murmurs in a voice heavy with grief. He skims a tender fingertip against the nerveless tissue and Obi-Wan shivers all the same, goosebumps rising beneath Qui-Gon’s touch. "What was done to you?" 

For just a breath, they’re ten, fifteen years younger. Qui-Gon will soothe and patch up his apprentice with concern and quiet affection. Obi-Wan will set his jaw, defiant against his own pain, even as the whole of his being relaxes beneath the safety and hard-won constancy of his Master and mentor. Qui-Gon will make him tea. Obi-Wan will guide their evening meditation with a little wrinkle of concentration in his brow. They’ll heal, they’ll carry on—they’ll be fine. They’ll be _fine_. 

_What was done to you. Obi-Wan._ Obi-Wan— 

The moment hangs between them, frail and wounded as it waits to be broken. 

Obi-Wan sucks in a breath and the years between them snap back into place. He leans back and jerks his tunic closed. "Come back and I’ll tell you." He looks up again and casts Qui-Gon a smile that’s disarming in how convincing it seems. "Shall I put the kettle on?" 

  


* * *

  


Something shifts in the tension between them, after that morning. It’s no longer the tension of coldness, of trying to maintain distance, but of trying to _bridge_ it—of longing to reach out and touch something Qui-Gon isn’t sure he has a right to anymore. He catches himself at moments, hand outstretched at Obi-Wan’s back, words poised on the tip of his tongue. 

_You only have to reach halfway—just halfway._

_Please._

  


* * *

  


"Are you disappointed that I took up Soresu?" 

Obi-Wan has finished packing up the lab equipment, so he’s decided to busy himself by packing up everything short of the wayward Master himself. Qui-Gon, strangely enough, has lost the compulsion to stop him. Recognizing the futility of opposing a mission-bound Obi-Wan, unfettered by the subordinating restraints of his apprenticeship. 

Or something. 

Qui-Gon doesn’t look up from the tea leaves he’s measuring out. "Is that what you think?" 

"You looked rather put-out, is all. The other morning." 

"I look put-out about a lot of things recently. It seems to have become my resting-state expression. But, no," Qui-Gon says, tempering his bleak humor with a faint smile, directed at the teapot. "I’m not disappointed." 

Obi-Wan opens an old storage box, poking through the unorganized miscellany Qui-Gon had shoved into over the years. He sneezes into the chalky dust it kicks up, then wrinkles his nose and says, "All those years spent training me into Ataru…" 

"Have you forgotten it completely?" 

"Certainly not," Obi-Wan sniffs, shoving the crate aside and moving on to the next. "How could I? The world’s only just turned right-side up without all those acrobatics." 

"Then it’s not a waste. Besides," Qui-Gon says, "the tells are still there, though subtle. Soresu and Ataru are at far ends of the spectrum, and you’ve managed to incorporate them beautifully together. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it." He fills the teapot and adds, off-handedly, "You were always years ahead on your form, though." 

The silence finally makes Qui-Gon look up, eyebrows raised. "What?" 

"Nothing." 

_Did I never tell you that?_

Obi-Wan turns back to his busy-work and leaves Qui-Gon staring. It’s only then that he notices the tips of the knight’s ears are pink. 

The tea is all but ready when a spike of _alarm_ shoots through the Force—centered on Obi-Wan. It sets off an instinctive reaction within Qui-Gon—he drops the pot and whirls, hand flying automatically to his hip even though he stores his 'saber in the bedroom. "Obi-W—" 

"—What is this?" 

Obi-Wan is crouched on the floor holding a dusty medical supply-box. He overturns it and lets cartridge after empty, plastic cartridge roll out over the floor between them. " _What is this?_ " 

Qui-Gon tenses, his jaw tightens. He had forgotten. He had _forgotten_ —hidden it away from himself, one meaningless box among many stuffed beneath the couch. 

Obi-Wan shakes his head, eyes narrowed. He picks through one cartridge, then another, and another. "Broatine, Broatine," he mutters over and over again, rolling them and pushing aside with agitated fingers as he sifts through them—all empty, forgotten, with dates long-since passed. 

Obi-Wan’s growing dread heats up the air between them. He tips out the nebulizer next, dusty with disuse and batteries long-since dead and corroded through the casing. He shoves it across the floor between them where it sits as a glaring accusation. Obi-Wan’s voice is low and tight, threaded with something that could be mistaken for a warning. "How long?" 

Exhaustion, despair, defeat, shame—they all war for dominance within Qui-Gon as he sighs with every ounce of his being and sags back against the wall. "Broaching this, Obi-Wan," he says wearily, "will go far beyond the mission you accepted. There are enough doors we’ve opened which cannot be closed without this one, too." 

Obi-Wan surges to his feet and forward. He tears at Qui-Gon’s tunics, rips them off his shoulders and down his arms. It exposes the deep, creeping, indigo lines down his ribs, down the insides of his arms, all grown darker and longer as he let his veins grow murky and polluted by the Breath-Eater. 

It exposes Qui-Gon’s shameful secret. Sustilia’s death is becoming his, too. 

Obi-Wan is ashen-faced. "When did you run out?" he demands, clutching tightly at Qui-Gon’s tunics with stark, white hands. He shoves at Qui-Gon’s shoulders once, trying to jar the truth out of him. "How long has it been?" 

"…Two years," Qui-Gon admits quietly. "I stopped requesting the refills two years ago." 

In that moment, everything falls to pieces. 

Obi-Wan jerks back like he’s been stunned. He braces a hand against the counter and looks lost for an awful moment, like he went to sleep in one horrible reality and just awoke in one that was only worse. He drags his gaze up to Qui-Gon and the raw fear and grief within it is staggering. "You need to leave this place," Obi-Wan croaks. 

"You should return to the Temple, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says gently. 

"Not without you. I—Qui-Gon—" Obi-Wan’s voice cracks on his name, soft and broken to his core with a sudden and terrible realization. "Did you come here to die?" 

The anguish on Obi-Wan’s face could ruin him, if he lets it. Qui-Gon smiles, sadly, and brushes the backs of his knuckles over Obi-Wan’s cheek. The significance of that gesture isn’t lost on either of them. "Please, Obi-Wan." 

Obi-Wan’s voice is ragged, quickly unraveling at the edges. "I begged for your life once before—" His cold hands creep up to hold Qui-Gon’s neck, thumbs pressing into his jaw, grip bordering on painful, "—Don’t make me do it again," he pleads. 

It’s only this close that Qui-Gon can feel the tremble in Obi-Wan’s fingers. "My Obi-Wan," he murmurs, and covers them with his own in an effort to still them. "The best and highest parts of myself are nothing compared even to the unfulfilled potentiality of you. They never were." He sighs and lets his head hang beneath the weight of his own despair. "I failed you. Profoundly. As a Master and as a man." 

"The best and highest parts of myself are meaningless without you," Obi-Wan swallows so hard his throat clicks. "We’ll fix it, whatever it is, whatever happened to make you leave. I—understand why you put me up for my Knighthood now. If that—if my behavior—" 

"No, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon reassures him gently, sadly. "Your Knighthood was well and long deserved. The fault lies wholly with me for not telling you sooner. What I did isn’t something which can be fixed," Qui-Gon says wearily. His breaking in that moment is a quiet thing, gentle. He lets it happen. 

"I left because I fell in love with my own apprentice," Qui-Gon says. "Willfully and selfishly, and in egregious betrayal of the trust he had placed in me as his Master." 

The silence that falls is ruinous. 

It’s the silence of dark matter—the catastrophic silence of a planet blown to nothing, a billion complex, brilliant lives blinking into blackness, into a void that threatens to drag Qui-Gon under. 

He waits and braces himself for Obi-Wan’s anger. His guilt, his disgust. Disappointment. _Anything_. 

Obi-Wan gives him nothing. When he finally, _finally_ speaks, he is stoic, voice tightly controlled. His eyes remain fixed somewhere on Qui-Gon’s shoulder. "…When did you fall out of love with him?" 

"Never," Qui-Gon answers at once. "He—you—" he swallows against the lump of sorrow in his throat. "The memory of you, just that leftover piece of you, is the only thing that could ever make this place home. The solitude here, the silence—everything falls away, except for you. There has never been anything else for me." He drags his hands over his face. "I’m so sorry, Obi-Wan. You deserved better than this from your own Master." 

Obi-Wan carefully releases his grip on Qui-Gon. 

Then he backs away, slowly, and leaves without another word. 

Qui-Gon sinks to the floor, miserable and undone to the core and thinks, perhaps, that was the last door he and Obi-Wan Kenobi will ever go through. 

  


* * *

  


Obi-Wan doesn’t return for hours. When he does, his anger arrives first. It rolls through the door like thunder and smoke, dark, electrified, creeping into all the house’s cracks and crevices—nearly self-aware in its focused intensity. 

Qui-Gon feels it coming; he tastes Obi-Wan’s fury like hot ash and summer-night petrichor in the back of his throat. He’s seated on the bed, fresh from the shower with damp hair and cold feet when he senses the man’s approach. He sighs, stands to meet him, and prepares himself for devastation. 

Sustilia’s light is heavy and saturated, gloaming-purple-dark, and it blackens further beneath Obi-Wan’s shadow. He stands in the door, filling it with so much more than his physical body, hand braced white-knuckled against the frame. Seven years— _seven years_ —and Obi-Wan is _furious_ , poised for his reckoning, for the retribution he’s due. 

"I forgive you." 

A beat of silence. 

Qui-Gon’s voice is flat. "You do." 

" _Yes_. I _forgive_ you," Obi-Wan spits. His anger and hurt bubble hot between them. He stalks forward and seizes Qui-Gon’s face. "But just _one word_ , Qui-Gon." He winds his hands tightly in Qui-Gon’s long hair. "One word was all I needed. All it would have taken." 

Qui-Gon frowns. "You—" 

" _Yes._ " 

Hope feels unnatural to Qui-Gon, but that doesn’t matter when Obi-Wan kisses him. Fiercely, desperately—with the demanding scrape of teeth and the taste and grit of the planet’s dust. "I’d have had you on the bloody Council Chamber floor, you great, karking fool," he growls against Qui-Gon’s lips, breath hot, holding his head fast. " _Anywhere_." His fingers tighten painfully. "I loved you. I _love_ you." 

Qui-Gon should say something, he should _say something_ —his mouth is open, but language is weak and useless. So he gives in. His expression shatters and he seizes Obi-Wan around the waist and digs his fingers in—sinks into the kiss, lets himself drown in it. He forgets to breathe but it doesn't matter because Obi-Wan is the thing which suffocates and revives him in the same breath, because he is the _only_ thing there is. 

Qui-Gon draws back, just an inch between them. "Take this now, or leave and never come back," he murmurs, damp lips grazing over Obi-Wan’s. "If I lose you a second time, I won’t survive it." 

Obi-Wan huffs, then curls a fist into Qui-Gon’s tunic and walks him back towards the bunk with dark-eyed intent. "Fuck me," Obi-Wan orders him. He shoves Qui-Gon down onto the mattress and leans over him, holding him fast. " _Make_ me yours," he says through his teeth, "and _don’t_ lose me this time." 

The Force between them pulses hot and syrupy-thick with _want_. He drags Obi-Wan down for a fierce kiss, hard and demanding and heavy with far too many thoughts gone unspoken. They lose themselves in it until Obi-Wan finally makes a soft, abortive noise in the back of his throat. It prompts Qui-Gon to draw back with the drag of his tongue and a faint, coppery tang in his mouth. 

"Qui-Gon—" Obi-Wan’s steely expression falters, then softens, and he grazes his fingers along Qui-Gon’s jaw. His lips are wet and bite-swollen, eyes bright and blown dark as they flitter over Qui-Gon’s face. "Do you want this with me?" he asks in a rough voice, "Truly?" 

Qui-Gon’s answer is a rumbling, chest-deep growl. "Take these off—I want to see you—" he says, tugging at the heavy cloth of Obi-Wan’s tunics. He’s desperate to relearn the body he’d already seen a hundred different times, but never like _this_. "Let me see you—all of you. Let me—" 

It's all Obi-Wan needs. He all but tears their clothing off, tossing it away messily onto the floor. He doesn’t mention his scars and Qui-Gon doesn’t care about them. He touches every inch of pale, freckled skin he can get his hands and lips on, greedy and starving for it. He has Obi-Wan pulled up high, straddling his shoulders, Qui-Gon busy sucking a dark bruise onto the inside of his thigh when Obi-Wan contorts and leans over the edge of the bed with an impatient huff. The Force ripples like a stream eddy and a bottle of slick bacta-gel rolls across the floor, into his outstretched palm. 

"Inappropriate use of the Force," Qui-Gon chides him automatically. 

"Not my Master anymore," Obi-Wan reminds him, and snaps the lid off. He plants his free hand on the center of Qui-Gon’s chest and shoves him into the pillow. It’s desperate and needy between them, no finesse or patience. Obi-Wan’s preparation is as fast as he can make it—he sits up on his knees and reaches back, opening himself up for his lover on two fingers, then three. He bats Qui-Gon’s attentive hands away. "Next time," he grits out, "Take as long as you want with me next time. I need it now—" 

"I don’t want to hurt you—" 

"You won’t. I know what I like." 

Obi-Wan pitches forward on his elbows at the same time he sinks slowly, _slowly_ down and takes all of Qui-Gon at once. He cries out into Qui-Gon’s open mouth—a rough sound that settles down into low, soft moans through his teeth as they find their rhythm. "I love you—love y-" Obi-Wan chants, bracing himself against the wall, using it to push himself back to meet every thrust beneath him. "Don’t you— _kriffing_ forget it—" he pants, eyes scrunched shut, head hanging between his shoulders. 

_Gorgeous. You’re perfect. Fucking perfect._

"No one else," Qui-Gon growls, neither knowing nor caring which one of them he’s talking to. He pitches up seizes Obi-Wan around the waist, hands slick with sweat and bacta gel. He flips them, kneeling up to pin Obi-Wan between his body and the cold wall. " _No one else_." 

It forces Obi-Wan down onto Qui-Gon’s cock with the weight of his own body. " _N-Never—ngh—!_ " he sobs out as he hooks one hand under Qui-Gon’s tensed thigh, the other around his neck. He lets his head fall forward, crying out into Qui-Gon’s shoulder as he’s rocked against the wall over and over again, "You—just you—ju—" 

It’s all he can do to hold on and let Qui-Gon fuck him into an orgasm a decade in the making. 

  


* * *

  


"This doesn’t fix everything, you know," Obi-Wan says afterward, gazing up at the ceiling. Almost absent-mindedly, he drags his fingers through the mess of come still cooling tacky on his belly. "It will take time. And rather more than one magnificent shagging." 

Qui-Gon sees past the deflective attempt at humor, reads right into the deep hurt within Obi-Wan that will take much longer and far more work to heal. He rolls onto his side and reaches out to thread his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair, pushing it back off his sweaty forehead. He inches closer and kisses Obi-Wan’s temple, tenderly. "I know." 

"I’m so angry with you I could _spit_." 

"You’re far too polite for that." 

"Lucky for you." 

Qui-Gon kisses him again, then reaches over to light a glow-globe against the darkness. He nudges Obi-Wan to turn over onto his stomach. 

Obi-Wan complies readily and without a care for the linens; he’s boneless and relaxed, eyes closed. He puffs out a soft, guttural grunt when Qui-Gon lowers himself over his back, blanketing Obi-Wan’s body with his own and holding him tight between his legs and arms. 

"Again?" Obi-Wan mutters into the pillow. "Already?" 

Qui-Gon hums and pushes his nose into the hair behind Obi-Wan’s ear, damp and smelling of clean skin. "Perhaps in a bit," he says. He’s already half hard against Obi-Wan’s thigh, but still too tired to really do anything decisive about it yet. Instead, he loops his arms around the man’s shoulders, scoots downward, resting his head on Obi-Wan’s back between his shoulder blades. He feels smooth ridges and bumps of scar tissue beneath his cheek. "Will you tell me about them?" 

Obi-Wan sighs, deep enough that Qui-Gon can hear the rush of air beneath his ear. "Will you come back to the Temple with me?" 

Qui-Gon tightens his hands around his lover’s shoulders. "Please, Obi-Wan." 

It’s another minute or two before Obi-Wan finally capitulates. "I was captured and held for two months by a cartel of spice runners out in the Vreer System." His voice is dry, almost detached. "It wasn’t very often they got their hands on a Jedi. I was to be made an example of. There was really no rhyme or reason to it beyond that. No exciting story, I’m afraid." 

Qui-Gon’s fingers slip up to press against the scar around Obi-Wan’s throat—a gentle, silent question. 

"Force suppressor," Obi-Wan murmurs into the blankets, voice muffled. Perhaps intentionally. "Who knows how they managed to get their bloody hands on one." 

"How did you escape?" 

"Through no skill of my own," Obi-Wan admits. He rubs his cheek against his arm in an absent, thoughtful motion. "They eventually packed me into an escape pod and set me adrift at the edge of the Edvary Run. I was picked up by a group of junkers who traded me back to the Republic in exchange for dropping their outstanding arrest warrants." He sighs sleepily and nudges deeper into the crook of his elbow. "I don’t remember much of it, though. Not after the first month, really." 

"When did it happen?" 

"My third solo mission out. You were gone by the time I was back at the Temple. You couldn’t have known." 

Qui-Gon squeezes his eyes shut and grips Obi-Wan tighter. The guilt of it tears at his insides like a rabid animal. It wants to shred his muscles, to crack his bones open with its teeth. Rage and shame claw up his throat with their sharp fingernails—he would give anything of himself for Obi-Wan. To keep him safe, to bring him a moment of joy or peace or happiness. Anything. _Everything_. 

And someone had put lit cigs out on his body. 

Qui-Gon tastes bile and Darkness in the back of his throat. 

This was beyond torture. It was _butchery_ , and it sickens Qui-Gon with residual fear to think of what he’d almost lost—and willfully, if ignorantly, so. But ignorance was never an excuse he’d tolerated before, and he won’t tolerate it of himself even now. 

" _Obi-Wan_ —" 

"Shh, none of that," Obi-Wan murmurs over his shoulder, picking up on his lover’s aching, spiraling heartsickness. "Matters could have gone much worse than they did. I’m alright now. I’m alright." He reaches back blindly and rubs Qui-Gon’s hip next to his own, soothing, brushing away the growing malaise around Qui-Gon like smoke. "I’ve done alright for myself since then," he says, gently mollifying, unwilling to rehash a set of emotions he’d long since put to rest on his own. 

Qui-Gon shakes his head, scratches his beard against the soft skin of Obi-Wan’s nape. He strokes his thumb over a ridge of scar tissue so thick and gnarled, it’s a wonder Obi-Wan made it out with his spine intact. Slowly, Qui-Gon slides down the line of Obi-Wan’s back and presses a soft, lingering kiss to it—a silent apology for that and every mark he passes on the way back up. "You don’t have to be grateful that it wasn’t worse for you," he finally says, coming to rest again between his lover’s shoulder blades. 

Obi-Wan’s mouth twists into a strange smirk, only the corner visible above the pillow. "I think I do," he says. "They were expanding into sentient-trafficking in the Outer Rim. Had they known their captive was the _Sith Killer_ ," he wrinkles his nose at the name, "I suspect my fate would have been much bleaker, indeed." 

The humor in Obi-Wan’s voice guts him. "I’m sorry," Qui-Gon whispers. "I’m so sorry, my Obi-Wan." 

Obi-Wan squirms and rolls beneath him, turning to cradle Qui-Gon’s face between his hands. "It wasn’t your fault," he murmurs, his gaze kind, warm in its sadness. "This wasn’t anyone’s fault; you couldn’t have known." 

"I should have. I—" 

"Hush," Obi-Wan soothes him. "It doesn’t matter. It’s long since in the past. We both have things to be rather sorry for," he says. The smile he gives Qui-Gon is slow and sweet and just a little bit sorrowful, and Qui-Gon has never seen anything like it. "Let’s bide our time with all this misery for now, alright?" 

Qui-Gon kisses him, deeply and with heavy intent. When he pulls away, there's only enough room for a single breath between their lips. "I left my apprentice," he murmurs, "awoke to the Sith Killer, and now you’re someone new entirely. Seven years," he curls his hand around Obi-Wan’s jaw, "and I’m afraid I don’t know you at all anymore." 

Obi-Wan reaches up to grip his wrist. "Learn," he says. "We both will." 

It’s a remarkable and humbling reversal of roles, Qui-Gon thinks, letting his former apprentice ground him back into sense and reality. "You are extraordinary. You were—" his voice grows rough, "—you are my greatest achievement." 

"I am only what you made me." 

"You’ve made your sorry Master so proud. You always have," Qui-Gon whispers. He kisses Obi-Wan’s neck, presses his forehead into it and murmurs against his skin, "So proud he fears his old, tired heart will break with it, Padawan." It isn’t a title now, but an endearment—the word for the only thing which has ever come so close to Qui-Gon’s heart and ever will. 

It breaks something loose within Obi-Wan—he presses the heels of of his hands against his eyes, holding them there for a moment, gritting his teeth like he’s in pain. Then he throws his arms around Qui-Gon’s shoulders, buries his face against his throat, clutching at him. His voice is heavy, trembling beneath the weight of his own grief and love. " _Master_ ," he breathes the word against Qui-Gon’s hair and down into his soul. " _I miss you_ , Master—I miss you so much—" 

"I’m here now, Obi-Wan. I won’t leave you again," Qui-Gon soothes and promises him. He holds his Padawan, his lover, his Obi-Wan—letting the _rightness_ of it all settle over them, settle into stillness, settle into weary, peaceful silence. 

  


* * *

  


They languish for another two days, never bothering to pack the rest of the house, or even get dressed. It isn’t just about the sex—although it very much _is_ —but about the closeness of it, having nothing left to separate them on any level. Qui-Gon’s all but forgotten his work here, forgotten the noises of his little planet—it all disappears beneath the rustle of bedsheets and the soft, needy, rhythmic _unh—unh—unh—!_ he’s learned to work out of Obi-Wan’s throat. 

The bedroom grows damp and heavy with the smell of sex and sweat—in another life, Qui-Gon would have packed his apprentice off to the shower; now, he buries his nose in the hair at Obi-Wan’s nape, drags his hands through the wet mess they’ve made of each other’s body, licks salt from his fingertips and gives the taste back to Obi-Wan with his tongue. 

When the grime finally becomes unbearable for both of them, they squeeze into the little shower chest to chest, and then soon enough back to chest, elbows braced against the tile wall, until the water reservoir runs ice-cold. 

It’s even too much for Qui-Gon to watch from afar when Obi-Wan fixes tea, standing naked at the counter and bouncing on his feet just a bit as he measures out the leaves. He slips out from under the covers and pads up to press himself against the lean curve of Obi-Wan’s back. 

Obi-Wan hums out a happy noise and closes his eyes, turns his head into Qui-Gon’s shoulder with an easy smile. "I love this," he murmurs, reaching back with one hand to pull the heavy, elbow-length fall of Qui-Gon’s hair over both their shoulders. "No more hair ties. Never again." It’s all he says as he relaxes into Qui-Gon’s broad chest and lets the lid clatter back onto the ceramic teapot. 

They fuck while it steeps. Qui-Gon puts Obi-Wan on his back, spreads him out over the table, and makes good on his promise to _learn_. Muscle, scar, bone—Qui-Gon doesn’t miss an inch of it with his hands or mouth. It’s a tactile meditation that leaves Obi-Wan squirming and begging until he finally kicks impatiently at Qui-Gon’s shoulder with an imperious, _Just bloody get on with it!_

"Impertinent," Qui-Gon murmurs, gazing down through darkened eyes. He drags his hands up the length of Obi-Wan’s legs before he draws them up, pushes them wide, and gives Obi-Wan what he wants. 

Afterward, tucked up against Qui-Gon’s chest in bed again, Obi-Wan wrinkles his nose and gives his tea an appraising sip. "Not bad, considering," he mutters into the mug. "Bit tannin-y." Then he burrows deeper and presses a soft kiss to the side of Qui-Gon’s neck. "We’ll have to talk about it eventually, you know," he murmurs. He drags his fingers up Qui-Gon’s arm and lifts it, brushing his lips against the stark, indigo-dark lines radiating out from his inner elbow. "You need the healers sooner rather than later." 

Qui-Gon sighs down into messy, copper-blond hair and pulls the covers up around his lover’s naked shoulders. He rests his cheek on the crown of Obi-Wan's head. "We’ll leave tomorrow morning." 

He feels Obi-Wan still in his arms for a moment, then a slight nod. Obi-Wan’s relief goes unspoken, but Qui-Gon senses it through the Force all the same—a purifying feeling like clean air, green-grass fresh and tinged with expanding, sunny hope. 

"Thank you," Obi-Wan whispers against his throat. " _Thank you_." 

  


* * *

  


Qui-Gon doesn’t feel sadness as he closes the door to Valley Outpost for the last time. He doesn’t feel tired, or anxious for his return to the Temple and the Order at large. He just feels a strange, quiet sort of serenity as he and Obi-Wan hike single-file down the cliff-face, then side-by-side, hand-in-hand, across Sustilia’s vast and empty chalk flats. 

A heavy cloud of indigo dust fills the air, shaken off as Obi-Wan powers up the two seater’s engines and runs through pre-launch checks. 

"The Negotiator," Obi-Wan murmurs as they break Sustilia’s upper atmosphere. He reaches over without looking, seeking out Qui-Gon’s fingers with his own. 

"Pardon?" Qui-Gon looks over from the co-pilot’s seat, looks at Obi-Wan over their joined hands. 

"They call me the Negotiator now," Obi-Wan says, and sets their course for home. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  aka: the one where the author shamelessly, heavy-handedly indulges in every single one of her favorite, melodramatic tropes.
> 
> Also: Y'ALL. Merry_Amelie beta read this on _Christmas Day_. Her edits always make a world of difference. Thank you, my friend!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sound The Abyss With Bitter End In Hand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996480) by [sanerontheinside](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/pseuds/sanerontheinside)




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